7 papers in the library · 18 citations · publishing 2011-2020
Signs of the Spirit May 15, 2020 Tony Perman
The chapter explores emotional experience via attention to mhongo spirits, possession, and the effects of musical performance. It compares multiple performances in order to demonstrate how ceremonial conventions can be manipulated or undermined. The chapter introduces mhongo spirits, the intricate drumming that brings them to dance, and the consequences of shifting performance signs. The goal...
Signs of the Spirit May 15, 2020 Tony Perman
The chapter explains the theoretical framework that guides the analysis in subsequent chapters and introduces a model for understanding emotional experience rooted in the semiotic phenomenology of C. S Peirce. This model allows for the explication of diverse modes of experience and explains the impact of habits and values in the interpretation of signs during ceremonial performance. As selves...
Signs of the Spirit May 15, 2020 Tony Perman
The chapter addresses zvipunha spirits and signs of transformative experience, focusing explicitly on the here and now and the efficacy of musicking in reifying the emotional and spiritual possibilities of experience. The chapter is about a specific moment in which the zvipunha ceremony at Horus Farm transformed from one of adequacy and rote performance to one of spiritual awakening and joy. It...
Signs of the Spirit May 15, 2020 Tony Perman
This book pushes past the limits of language to explain how musicking contributes to powerful emotional and spiritual experiences. Emphasis on the ethnographic moment clarifies the impact that the past and the future have on the immediacy of the present. The prologue introduces the ethnographic encounter at the center of the text and addresses three key terms in the book’s title: music,...
May 15, 2020 Tony Perman
This book is an ethnography of spirit possession ceremonies and accompanying musical practices in the rural Ndau-speaking communities surrounding Chipinge, Zimbabwe. Collectively called madhlozi, these spirits are the “outsider spirits” of distant social encounters that have shaped Ndau identity and history. The purpose of this book is to explain how musicking during ceremonial life in rural...
Journal of Musicological Research July 1, 2011 Tony Perman 6 citations
The examination of two contexts of Ndau performance from southeastern Zimbabwe—ceremonial drumming for spirit possession and secular muchongoyo dance/drumming—is an excellent starting point for reopening discussion about the analytical value of aesthetics in ethnomusicology. Members of these communities evaluate performances according to specific ethical values and social expectations. The...
Journal of Religion in Africa 2011 Tony Perman 12 citations
In the Ndau communities of southeastern Zimbabwe people are born with a variety of spirits, thus spirit possession itself is a public manifestation of this relationship that is profoundly affected by local understandings of the Ndau self. There has often been an implication in the study of African (and Zimbabwean) spirit practices that the spirits themselves are actually something else,...